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Re: first attempt at queenrearing

Extremely nice acceptance. I think I got 18 accepted out of 96 grafts. Starting over from the very beginning. we are buidling queen castles today. have 10 cells due to emerge on wed or thurs. We will then place the empty frames for the mini nucs in full size hives until they are drawn and filled with brood. that will give us more room to get queens mated. that is when we will attempt to graft again.

Basically we did not have anything correct. From 8 queens emerged so far we only have one that is good enough quality or that has remained long enough to possibly get mated. She may be already. I will not check for another week.

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

i went ahead and looked at the cells this evening, which is day 4 after grafting.

i've got 12 capped cells.

half of them are nice size and the plastic cups are full of royal jelly.

the other half are smaller and not so much jelly. i attribute this to not much of a flow here right now and i didn't provide any feed. my builder colony could have been a little stronger as well. i'll be ready next year!

i'll use the six good ones, and put roller cages on the others just to see if they hatch out in the cell builder.

journaling the growth of a treatment free apiary started in 2010. 20+/- hives

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

Originally Posted by squarepeg

the other half are smaller and not so much jelly. i attribute this to not much of a flow here right now and i didn't provide any feed. my builder colony could have been a little stronger as well. i'll be ready next year!

Pretty much anything you read by anyone using any method says to rear queens, best on a flow, and if not feed. most feed even with a flow on.

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

today is day 8 post graft. i've got six queenless nucs ready for the six best cells.

i'll do this wednesday evening.

i'm going to cage the other six, allow them to emerge in the finisher, remove them and keep them banked inside the house until i see if the six i placed in the nucs emerge. if the ones i place don't emerge i'll try introducing the virgins.

(assuming i still have 12 capped cells and 'fang' hasn't shown up since the last time i looked )

thanks again for all of the helpful feedback.

journaling the growth of a treatment free apiary started in 2010. 20+/- hives

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

the threat of heavy rain for the next few days prompted the placement of the cells this evening (day 9.5 after grafting).

i still had 12 on the rack and they were all covered with nurse bees, so i am assuming for now they are viable.

i placed the best looking 6 cells in the mating nucs i had prepared, and caged the rest. i'll try to get the caged ones out as soon as they hatch and start feeding them.

i'm not sure what to do next about the placed cells other than wait and see. i was thinking i would check for emergence on day 16 or so and if they don't hatch trying to introduce one of the virgins if i get any.

journaling the growth of a treatment free apiary started in 2010. 20+/- hives

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

Weather! Grrr...Yeah Too hot, too cold, when do we get jussssst right? My last graft batch was looking good until our high heat wave the last few days. Temps near 100..now the cells look like you know what.
I feel like Goldilocks. WAIT -That would mean Bears are next!

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

In all we lost all cells or queens from our first three attempts. We finally made a couple of queen castles so we can just move frames of brood to mating nucs. More preparation needs to be done on the mini nuc frames so we placed those in hives so they will be drawn with comb and filled with brood.

4th and 5th attempt plus a couple of wild queen cells has resulted in 7 queens now in two castles. Today tomorrow and the next day they are due for their mating flights. I have not even opened the castles to check on them. They have constant syrup and mega bee. This will give me half the queens I need to reach my goal of 22 langstroth hives. I am working on putting together the next attempt at the other half. waiting for frames to get drawn or making one more queen castle.

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

Click on each photo on the facebook page for detailed info. Video shows brushing bees off their frames-from a 10 frame deep- onto mini frames and caging the existing queen for a few days until they started drawing out the new comb.Then I turned her lose so she could get back to work. I used those older frames of brood the bees were brushed off of to freshin my starter hive.

beginner's luck!

five out the six cells i left in the finisher emerged into their roller cages today.

good looking virgins (nice length) even though they came from the smaller of the capped cells.

i brought them inside and tried to get them to take some diluted honey that i had saturated some wax cappings with. they showed no interest in the honey, but rather buried their heads into the end of the cages and just sat there.

i decided to put some workers in the cages to see if that would perk them up and it did.

the honey on the wax cappings wasn't a good idea as they were all getting sticky, so i replaced the cappings with a saturated cotton ball.

the sixth cell (the one that didn't emerge) was the smallest cell of the bunch and the nurse bees were ignoring it so i decided to open it. sure enough, it wasn't viable. it looked to have stopped developing about mid-pupation.

seeing these today gives me hope that the better looking cells i placed in the nucs are going to be alright. now they just have to get mated and we'll see if they are anything like their queen mother.

i'll probably take a look on saturday if the rain stops long enough to make sure they emerged.

thanks again for all the replies, this first attempt will be a memorable one!

journaling the growth of a treatment free apiary started in 2010. 20+/- hives

Re: beginner's luck!

WE went back to the something of a system that has produced queens for me in the past. We completed the third of three Queen Castles yesterday. These are 10 frame bodies with three dividers that create 4 compartments in each castle 2 frames per compartment. 8 of our emerged queens had been placed in these over a week ago. I inspected yesterday morning and all but one queen was missing. But many of them had started queen cells so i split the compartments of the castles and added frames of open brood to all of them. one compartment has a laying queen and needs to be transferred to a 5 frame nuc. We also have 2 5 frame nucs that need are queenless and had frames of brood added to them. hopefully each compartment and nuc will manage to rear a queen for itself. This is the only way I have been able to produce queens in the past so I hope it works. In all it is 14 tiny colonies under way and I need to put together one more. When the compartment with the mated queen is transferred it will open a space to make one more starter colony. If nothing else we are ready for next spring when the bees naturally make queen cells.

Re: beginner's luck!

I'm not sure where the myth about newly emerging virgin queens not being able to fly, originated. But a few days ago, I was minutes behind schedule placing a bar of cells into individual California mini cages, for emergence there. But, the cells had already begun emerging. I took them out of the cell builder, placed the bar on the bench nearby, with the cell tips, up. Then I scrambled to catch the virgins as they continued to emerge, and place each one in her own cage. There were several chewing their way out, all at the same time. I managed to capture most of them, but two tried to fly off on me -- the first one to fly I managed to catch out of the air, but the last one flew up, up, and away. I think I found her later, back in the cell builder colony (it still had its cover off). I also went through the cell builder and rounded up another six or seven, who had emerged before I pulled the cell bar. Fortunately they hadn't got around to eliminating each other, yet.

Later this morning I plan to graft a new batch into this cell builder (I already gave them fresh combs of brood/pollen). But I think I'll sort them all through an excluder to help ensure no other virgin is in there, or I'm sure they'll reduce my graft takes to zero.

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

I can't really say where those queens went. I do know I did not like the look of the quality of them. The only queen that did look good is still there. My gut tells me the bees where not impressed with these queens and did them in as soon a they had mated and laid the first eggs there is some very spotty open larva in these nucs. That is just purely what my gut tells me. I think if I can get at least one quality queen produced in each nuc they will be off and running.

In all the vanishing act of queens in my apiary this year has me concerned. It has been happening since April.

Re: first attempt at queenrearing

Originally Posted by Lauri

To see how I got these mini frames drawn out in just a few days, go to my facebook page at link below:

Click on each photo on the facebook page for detailed info. Video shows brushing bees off their frames-from a 10 frame deep- onto mini frames and caging the existing queen for a few days until they started drawing out the new comb.Then I turned her lose so she could get back to work. I used those older frames of brood the bees were brushed off of to freshin my starter hive.

Is there a specific post on your FB with the info? When I clicked on the link it just took me to your main fb page.